War

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Poet, a truce to your song!
Have you heard the heart sing?
Like a brook among trees,
Like the humming of bees,
Like the ripple of wine:
Had you heard, would you stay
Blowing bubbles so long?
You have ears for the spheres -
Have you heard the heart sing?

*            *            *            *            *

Have you loved the good books of the world, -
And written none?
Have you loved the great poet, -
And burnt your little rhyme?
'O be my friend, and teach me to be thine.'

*            *            *            *            *

By many hands the work of God is done,
Swart toil, pale thought, flushed dream, he spurneth none:
Yea! and the weaver of a little rhyme
Is seen his worker in his own full time.

Lo! the Boar’s tail is salted, and the Kangaroo’s exalted,
And his right eye is extinguished by a man-o’-warsman’s cap;
He is flying round the fences where the Southern Sea commences,
And he’s very much excited for a quiet sort of chap.
For his ships have had a scrap and they’ve marked it on the map
Where the H.M.A.S. Sydney dropped across a German trap.
So the Kangaroo’s a-chasing of his Blessed Self, and racing
From Cape York right round to Leeuwin, from the coast to Nevertire;
And of him need be no more said, save that to the tail aforesaid
Is the Blue Australian Ensign firmly fixed with copper wire.
(When he’s filled the map with white men there’ll be little to desire.)
I was sulky, I was moody (I’m inclined to being broody)
When the news appeared in Sydney, bringing joy and ...

                            ". . . defeated, with great loss."


                    Not we the conquered!    Not to us the blame
                    Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
                    Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
                    Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

                    That day of battle in the dusty heat
                    We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
                    Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
                    And we the harvest of their garnering.

                    Some yielded, No, not we!    Not we, we swear
                    By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
                    Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
 ...

Scarlet coats, and crash o' the band,
The grey of a pauper's gown,
A soldier's grave in Zululand,
And a woman in Brecon Town.

My little lad for a soldier boy,
(Mothers o' Brecon Town!)
My eyes for tears and his for joy
When he went from Brecon Town,
His for the flags and the gallant sights
His for the medals and his for the fights,
And mine for the dreary, rainy nights
At home in Brecon Town.

They say he's laid beneath a tree,
(Come back to Brecon Town!)
Shouldn't I know?,I was there to see:
(It's far to Brecon Town!)
It's me that keeps it trim and drest
With a briar there and a rose by his breast,
The English flowers he likes the best
That I bring from Brecon Town.

And I sit beside him, him and me,
(We're back to Bre...

Under the orchard boughs,
    That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
        The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
        And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,
Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst,
Yet by the sun unkissed,
    Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass,
Brimful of red, red wine
Sweet as brown peasants glean along the castled Rhine

All sights and sounds are of the Autumn weather;
    The urchin rock'ng in the trees
        Shakes silver laughter with the apples down,--
    And wading to the knees
        Among the stubble and the husks so brown,
The oxen keeping every patient step together,
Bring in the creaking wain,
High-piled with yellow maize and sheaves of rustling grain.

While i...

I. Winter in Northumberland


Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
"Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;
Make way for our time,"
Wild winds have cried.
Green once and cheery,
The woods, worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary
Weak sun goes home:
A great wind grapples
The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.

Through fell and moorland,
And salt-sea foreland,
Our noisy norland
Resounds and rings;
Waste waves thereunder
Are blown in sunder,
And winds make thunder
With cloudwide wings;
Sea-drift makes dimmer
The beacon's glimmer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves qu...

    Peace in thy hands,
    Peace in thine eyes,
    Peace on thy brow;
Flower of a moment in the eternal hour,
    Peace with me now.

    Not a wave breaks,
    Not a bird calls,
    My heart, like a sea,
Silent after a storm that hath died,
    Sleeps within me.

    All the night's dews,
    All the world's leaves,
    All winter's snow
Seem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dream
    All sorrowing now.

Like an old battle, youth is wild
With bugle and spear, and counter cry,
Fanfare and drummery, yet a child
Dreaming of that sweet chivalry,
The piercing terror cannot see.

He, with a mild and serious eye
Along the azure of the years,
Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by;
But he sees not death's blood and tears,
Sees not the plunging of the spears.

And all the strident horror of
Horse and rider, in red defeat,
Is only music fine enough
To lull him into slumber sweet
In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat.

O, if with such simplicity
Himself take arms and suffer war;
With beams his targe shall gilded be,
Though in the thickening gloom be far
The steadfast light of any star!

Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch,
Q...

Nought more accursed in war I know

Than getting off scot-free;
Inured to danger, on we go

In constant victory;
We first unpack, then pack again,

With only this reward,
That when we're marching, we complain,

And when in camp, are bor'd.

The time for billeting comes next,

The peasant curses it;
Each nobleman is sorely vex'd,

'Tis hated by the cit.
Be civil, bad though be thy food,

The clowns politely treat;
If to our hosts we're ever rude,

Jail-bread we're forced to eat.

And when the cannons growl around,

And small arms rattle clear,
And trumpet, trot, and drum resound,

We merry all appear;
And as it in the fight may chance,

We yield, then charge amain,
An...

The evil days have come, the poor
Are made a prey;
Bar up the hospitable door,
Put out the fire-lights, point no more
The wanderer's way.
For Pity now is crime; the chain
Which binds our States
Is melted at her hearth in twain,
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain:
Close up her gates.
Our Union, like a glacier stirred
By voice below,
Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,
A beggar's crust, a kindly word
May overthrow!
Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we boast
Our blood and name;
Bursting its century-bolted frost,
Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast
Cries out for shame!
Oh for the open firmament,
The prairie free,
The desert hillside, cavern-rent,
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,
The Bushman's tree!
Than web of Persia...

Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,
So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor,
Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished
Bronze of sea-grasses.
Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas
And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean
Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine,
Jewels of water.
Joyous thunder of blown waves on the ledges,
Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow
Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff
Slim in his khaki.

    I.    THE FLUKE

    For two years you went
    Through all the worst of it,
    Men fell around you, but you did not fall.
    On the Somme when the air was a sea
    Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,
    Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch.
    And once when you watched from a village tower
    (At Longueval, was it?) between our guns and theirs
    As men fought in the houses below,
    A shell from an English battery came
    And tore a hole in the tower below you,
    But you were not hurt and remained observing.

    And now,
    A casual shell has come
    And pierced your head,
    And the men who were with you, uninjured,
    Carried you back,
    And you died on the way.


    II.    THE ...

In the dream of the Northern poets,
    The braves who in battle die
Fight on in shadowy phalanx
    In the field of the upper sky;
And as we read the sounding rhyme,
    The reverent fancy hears
The ghostly ring of the viewless swords
    And the clash of the spectral spears.

We think with imperious questionings
    Of the brothers whom we have lost,
And we strive to track in death's mystery
    The flight of each valiant ghost.
The Northern myth comes back to us,
    And we feel, through our sorrow's night,
That those young souls are striving still
    Somewhere for the truth and light.

It was not their time for rest and sleep;
    Their hearts beat high and strong;
In their fresh veins the blood of youth
    Was singing its hot, s...

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916.)


I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When - with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray -
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.
Those to preserve their country's greatness died;
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make
That from a war where Freedom was at stake
America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.


II

Be the...

And now, while the dark vast earth shakes and rocks
In this wild dream-like snare of mortal shocks,
How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars
On these magnificent, cruel wars?--
Venus, that brushes with her shining lips
(Surely!) the wakeful edge of the world and mocks
With hers its all ungentle wantonness?--
Or the large moon (pricked by the spars of ships
Creeping and creeping in their restlessness),
The moon pouring strange light on things more strange,
Looks she unheedfully on seas and lands
Trembling with change and fear of counterchange?

O, not earth trembles, but the stars, the stars!
The sky is shaken and the cool air is quivering.
I cannot look up to the crowded height
And see the fair stars trembling in their light,
For thinking of the st...

All-day-long the crash of cannon
Shook the battle-covered plain;
All-day-long the frenzied foemen
Dashed against our lines in vain;
All the field was piled with slaughter;
Now the lurid setting sun
Saw our foes in wild disorder,
And the bloody day was won.

Foremost on our line of battle
All-day-long a veteran stood
Stalwart, brawny, grim and steady,
Black with powder, smeared with blood;
Never flinched and never faltered
In the deadliest storm of lead,
And before his steady rifle
Lay a score of foemen dead.

Never flinched and never faltered
Till our shout of victory rose,
Till he saw defeat, disaster,
Overwhelmed our flying foes;
Then he trembled, then he tottered,
Gasped for breath and dropped his gun,
Staggered from ...

    Oh, the noise of Piccadilly - its rumble and its roar!
    A tide of life's broad ocean surging toward the shore.
    Who once has listened, ever can hear its long refrain
    With haunting echo drowning or dirge or flaunting strain.
    Who heeds it, in his vision may see a world-throng pass -
    And over there the Green Park with laughing lad and lass;
    While weary men and women and careless youth go by,
    Where windows glow and glitter, and in the evening sky
    A crescent moon is watching the laughing lass and lad.
    The long, warm London twilight! Happy they are, though sad.
    With kiss and tear they are parting. 'Tis late - the rush and roar -
    The life of Picadilly is waning - is no more.

    Ah, the dark, the cold, the stillness of the trenches in ...